to me, a game of telephone is trivially unimportant, and I tend not to think highly of people who say otherwise.

Yeah but it's fun.

Your whole rubric for evaluating religious systems is weird. It's like saying that Harry Potter isn't a good book because muggles aren't real.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 8:59 am

PoetryBox

Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 452
Location: brampton, ON

outpatient wrote:

MCGF wrote: But when it comes to the big questions such as whether there is a god or not, no one has any evidence either way. Condemning christians as zombies who turn to guidance in "clowns" and "snake oil salesmen" is just as idiotic and just as baseless in fact as o'reilly's assertions.

yes, no one has any evidence. in other words, religious beliefs lack substance. this is why they don't deserve respect. when it comes to people who claim to know what god(s) want us to do, they deserve hostility.

you ever play telephone in school? the modern translations of thousand year old holy books are the equivalent of the last kid to get the message. screw that kid, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

to me, a game of telephone is trivially unimportant, and I tend not to think highly of people who say otherwise.

it's true that the only logical thing for us to say is "I don't know", but if I was a gambling man, I'd wager eternal hellfire that a gaggle of confused middle eastern goat herders made this shit up. "I don't know" doesn't mean someone's claims are equally likely to be true as they are false. strident dickhead atheists and turdy sanctimonious christians aren't equally credible, even though they might be equally irritating.

for example, I don't put good odds on the existence of leprechauns. those leprechaun believers might be right, but they're betting against the dealer, you know? I keep my money and go spend it on things I think are good and worthwhile. That was a convoluted metaphor, but you get the idea.

anyway, the occultist pagan weirdos and alan moore types are mostly just guilty of being a bit mad. christians are that and unimaginative. a mortal sin, I'd say.

you have quite the god-complexe.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 9:06 am

Bicycle

Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 413

breakreep wrote:

Bicycle wrote: what are sciences measurable humanistic advances? Who benefits from science? who decides whether or not these advances are good?

Gahr this is bullshit! You're propping up one foot on a rock and one on a soggy box and saying they're identical! If you don't consider longer and more comfortable life spans (just off the top of my head) to be "humanistic advances" then you literally do not understand what "humanistic" means! And YOU benefit from it! You're using the internet RIGHT NOW!

No you're right I dont understand what humanistic means. I dont really see longer life spans as an advance in anything and how do you measure comfort? Im not comfortable. are you?

Lots of distractions. The internet is a distraction. I cant keep up with all the distractions. I get bogged down anxious and depressed. They could augment my brain with drugs to make it work better but I dont really like the idea of that. What do I know though?

Sun Feb 06, 2011 9:06 am

Bicycle

Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 413

Science is a more powerful tool than religion. The same people who have taken religions and used them to further their agenda now have drugs that can alter the way the brain works. If you can use Jesus to justify war, imagine what you can do when you cut out the middleman

Sun Feb 06, 2011 9:24 am

outpatient

Joined: 07 Jul 2005
Posts: 475
Location: haggis and scotch eggs

futuristxen wrote: Yeah but it's fun.

Your whole rubric for evaluating religious systems is weird. It's like saying that Harry Potter isn't a good book because muggles aren't real.

it's fun when nobody's taking it too seriously and trying to get all tyrannical on our asses. Not everyone is sophisticated enough to take this stuff as an experiment in consciousness. There's some serious aggravation and pain in the world because of religion.

harry potter is explicitly fabricated, and its merits as a story are distinct from the dangers of believing you can actually fly a broomstick or that your neighbour is lord voldemort. The bible is a great piece of literature, but it's worthless as a manual on the material world.

This is what will happen for all pets registered with us immediately after the Rapture:

1.Our non-Christian administrators will activate our rescue plan.

2.Volunteers will be alerted immediately by email and telephone that they have been activated.

3.Pets will be assigned to our Volunteer Pet Caretakers based upon location and other factors.

4.Our administrators and Volunteer Pet Caretakers will do whatever it takes to find and rescue your pets. If your pet has a location chip, they'll use that, or they'll go to every location you've registered with us, and, if your pets are not at one of those locations, they'll search for your cars as well as stay in contact with the local pet shelters. If they are unable to reach a Volunteer Caretaker in your area for whatever reason, our administrators will communicate with local animal organizations, like the Humane Society, to advocate for your pet's rescue and care.

5.Our administrators will stay in touch with our Volunteer Pet Caretakers regarding each and every pet to be sure everything is being done to rescue and care for them.

outpatient wrote: when it comes to people who claim to know what god(s) want us to do, they deserve hostility.

Basically.

No world or even large regional religion as it was maintained for thousands of years has ever pretended to be just a harmless parable to live one's life by--not even Buddhism, although people love to pretend that being Buddhist just means being Richard Gere. And I get the feeling that everyone here knows this is the case. So stop pretending that religion and Harry Potter have identical or even vaguely similar effects on cultures or individuals. That analogy is completely morally and intellectually false. What's more, you know it, I know it, and each of us knows the other knows it. We can discuss the religion as a malleable construct in the first place because we've all moved past the point in our lives wherein we could be easily distracted by bad logic.

So here's an analogy of my own, which is intended as a rhetorical tool rather than a constructive one. Ultimately, the choice in how to react to the aggressive promotion of a religion comes down to each individual situation and person, but a tendency toward patient mollification or even patronization seems to me to be the most common reaction.

I think this is because religion is like your neighbor's big stupid family dog that started raging and has only recently, after much effort and against the dog's will, been largely sedated. But no one wants to get rid of it because they all have some vague notion about how cruelty to animals is bad and they don't know how to put that in context. So everyone just keeps living with the slobbering fuck, and acts like that's OK because, after all, since they sedated it it has mostly behaved itself, even though it's peeing on the TV right now and keeps biting neighbors.

The problem is, being nice to the dog is pointless. It would start raging again if it could and is kept under control by forces with which it has an intrinsic mutual hostility (in real life the sedation translates to secular government and an educated public). Keeping it in your house is not only pointless but dangerous. So I and a lot of other people just want the fucking thing to die already. As long as it stays in its house, though, it's theoretically safe--although I don't know how much I trust the dude who keeps that crazy fucker under his roof in the first place to not let it outside to play once in a while. But if he walks it to my favorite park while I'm there, I'm getting in his face about keeping that shitty Cujo away from me and my testicles.

Which is, ultimately, where I differ with most other areligous or even irreligious people, who express maybe some slight discomfort but disguise it as an allergy to dogs, or don't even say anything and just walk away themselves. Fuck that. You have a dangerous stupid idea and you're throwing it around in a context where it's fair game to attack. I don't have allergies, I just don't feel comfortable around your dog and you don't have the right to make me play with it. And I'm not going to a different side of the playground just because your particular stupid idea, for some shitty reason or another, has developed some faux social respectability, or at least a propensity to be tolerated.

Nah, your idea belongs in the stupid sandbox with the kids who keep stepping on bees with their bare feet. Preach to me your stupid shit when I'm enjoying myself and the only way I'm not making fun of you is if I'm in a hurry somewhere or you look like you're strapped with bombs. And actually some of the people I've argued with in Utah do look like they might be strapped with bombs or will be tomorrow.

I probably mixed that metaphor somewhere along the line, or lost it completely, but fuck it. Anyone who bothers to read this whole thing gets the point. I hope.

outpatient wrote: when it comes to people who claim to know what god(s) want us to do, they deserve hostility.

Basically.

No world or even large regional religion as it was maintained for thousands of years has ever pretended to be just a harmless parable to live one's life by--not even Buddhism, although people love to pretend that being Buddhist just means being Richard Gere. And I get the feeling that everyone here knows this is the case. So stop pretending that religion and Harry Potter have identical or even vaguely similar effects on cultures or individuals. That analogy is completely morally and intellectually false. What's more, you know it, I know it, and each of us knows the other knows it. We can discuss the religion as a malleable construct in the first place because we've all moved past the point in our lives wherein we could be easily distracted by bad logic.

So here's an analogy of my own, which is intended as a rhetorical tool rather than a constructive one. Ultimately, the choice in how to react to the aggressive promotion of a religion comes down to each individual situation and person, but a tendency toward patient mollification or even patronization seems to me to be the most common reaction.

I think this is because religion is like your neighbor's big stupid family dog that started raging and has only recently, after much effort and against the dog's will, been largely sedated. But no one wants to get rid of it because they all have some vague notion about how cruelty to animals is bad and they don't know how to put that in context. So everyone just keeps living with the slobbering fuck, and acts like that's OK because, after all, since they sedated it it has mostly behaved itself, even though it's peeing on the TV right now and keeps biting neighbors.

The problem is, being nice to the dog is pointless. It would start raging again if it could and is kept under control by forces with which it has an intrinsic mutual hostility (in real life the sedation translates to secular government and an educated public). Keeping it in your house is not only pointless but dangerous. So I and a lot of other people just want the fucking thing to die already. As long as it stays in its house, though, it's theoretically safe--although I don't know how much I trust the dude who keeps that crazy fucker under his roof in the first place to not let it outside to play once in a while. But if he walks it to my favorite park while I'm there, I'm getting in his face about keeping that shitty Cujo away from me and my testicles.

Which is, ultimately, where I differ with most other areligous or even irreligious people, who express maybe some slight discomfort but disguise it as an allergy to dogs, or don't even say anything and just walk away themselves. Fuck that. You have a dangerous stupid idea and you're throwing it around in a context where it's fair game to attack. I don't have allergies, I just don't feel comfortable around your dog and you don't have the right to make me play with it. And I'm not going to a different side of the playground just because your particular stupid idea, for some shitty reason or another, has developed some faux social respectability, or at least a propensity to be tolerated.

Nah, your idea belongs in the stupid sandbox with the kids who keep stepping on bees with their bare feet. Preach to me your stupid shit when I'm enjoying myself and the only way I'm not making fun of you is if I'm in a hurry somewhere or you look like you're strapped with bombs. And actually some of the people I've argued with in Utah do look like they might be strapped with bombs or will be tomorrow.

I probably mixed that metaphor somewhere along the line, or lost it completely, but fuck it. Anyone who bothers to read this whole thing gets the point. I hope.

i began a sort of lengthy response, but I'll just say I'm uncomfortable with your belief in the superiority of humanism. Have you considered that religion is an integral part of culture, and that substituting religion for humanism on a global scale as an inevitable and necessary part of human progress - which is what your posts have suggested - implies cultural genocide? I mean wouldn't the end game to that logic then be that there were no more Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, and instead just humans in a totally non-religious social world? It sounds to me like the old humanism "kill the Indian, save the man." I think there is some religious zeal behind your insistence of science as the superior way of knowledge, and the way you argue for an absolute truth is common to religious fundamentalism. I get that there are observable laws of nature, and that systemic observation has lead to improvements. I get that "God" can not be proven and is therefore not a valid truth. Just not ok with where you seem to be taking it.

Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:34 pm

Bicycle

Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 413

breakreep wrote:

I think this is because religion is like your neighbor's big stupid family dog that started raging and has only recently, after much effort and against the dog's will, been largely sedated. But no one wants to get rid of it because they all have some vague notion about how cruelty to animals is bad and they don't know how to put that in context. So everyone just keeps living with the slobbering fuck, and acts like that's OK because, after all, since they sedated it it has mostly behaved itself, even though it's peeing on the TV right now and keeps biting neighbors.

So why is the neighbors big stupid family dog acting out? Your neighbor was probably abusive

perhaps this is your neighbor:

maybe this guy:

but lets blame it on the dog even though its obvious that your neighbor is more concerned with his haircut than the well being of the creature he has been entrusted with. If your neighbor cant take care of a dog, hows he gonna handle nuclear weaponry?